decades in law enforcement, I’ve seen a lot of changes. One of the most signifi cant is the proliferation of digital evidence. When I started my career with the LAPD, digital evidence was in its infancy. If there was an investigation, we would tape off a crime scene, wait for foren- sics, and canvass the neighborhood in search of evidence and eye wit- nesses. Now the protocol is to put up the yellow tape and search for every piece of evidence, especially any video evidence within a few square blocks of the crime scene. While CCTV video has certainly
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taken off, the spectrum of digital evi- dence is far wider. Think of all of the abundantly available sources of digi- tal evidence that address many of the questions we once labored to answer. There’s in-car video, interview re- cordings, crowd-sourced information (like citizen tips, photos, and videos), 911 recordings, and information from other systems, like Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR), Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD), and Records Management Systems (RMS). And we can’t forget body-worn cameras, which are being adopted by police de- partments in growing numbers. While digital evidence can help in- vestigators map out every second of a crime, it also brings new complexi- ties. The challenge used to be having enough sources of evidence, but today it’s the exact opposite. Police depart- ments are now facing a ‘big data’ problem. There’s so much data, and it’s coming from so many unconnected systems, that it’s difficult for investi- gators to ingest it, and absorb the rel- evant facts of a case. Fortunately, new technology is now
within reach to help investigators le- verage all of the available digital evi- dence so they can piece together the who, what, where, when and why of their investigations, and close more cases faster.
ver my nearly three
Even though CCTV is now commonplace in investigations, collecting it is still incredibly time-consuming. It requires an investigator to physically drive to the crime scene and canvass the neighborhood, and cameras can be hard to spot, especially in high rises, where they’re not always visible.
Collecting Evidence: The Conundrum After the Boston Bombing in April 2013, dozens of offi cers immediately fanned out to canvass the 20-square-block crime scene in search of surveillance video—evidence that eventually helped identify the suspects and piece together the day’s events. Law enforcement also put out a call for Marathon-goers to send in photos and videos taken in the moments leading up to the attack. In the
fi rst four hours alone, more than 13,500 photos and videos came in, overwhelm- ing and crashing the servers set up to receive them. This is just one example, but it illus-
trates the crux of a much bigger prob- lem: the sheer volume and variety of digital evidence has outpaced our man- ual and ad hoc methods for collecting it. Consider how investigators collect evidence and build cases today. Even though CCTV is now commonplace in investigations, collecting it is still in-
Another problem investigators need to contend with is the large range of video and audio formats, codecs and proprietary players. Often, an investigator will obtain a copy of a CCTV video on a CD or thumb drive and bring it back to the office, only to realize he/she cannot play it back.
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